Supervisors Compromise On Budget

Formal Vote On Plan Next Week

May 09, 2002|By MATHEW PAUST and KARA URBANSKI Daily Press

JAMES CITY — Several key compromises marked a marathon budget work session Wednesday by the county Board of Supervisors.

In a meeting that started at 4:30 p.m. and promised to push on until nearly day's end, the board offered to pay for one school resource police officer, restore money for a youth drug-prevention program and give the School Board money that it's requesting to air-condition a gymnasium at Lafayette High School.

The county's proposed budget for fiscal 2002-03, which begins July 1, would have eliminated money for the two county resource officers now assigned to James Blair and Berkeley middle schools, both in Williamsburg.

On Wednesday, the supervisors agreed in a straw vote to put one of the officers back, to work a half-day at one of the schools. This would hinge on a similar gesture from Williamsburg to provide a city officer for half- time duty in the other school.

To ensure parity among the three middle schools, the county's officer at Toano Middle School would work a half- day in the school and a half-day on regular police duty, board members agreed.

The board won't conduct a formal vote on the spending plan until Tuesday.

A plan to move Project Legacy -- a program run by Bacon Street Inc. to counsel at-risk children -- to the county Department of Community Services passionately was opposed last month in a board budget hearing.

Project Legacy won high praise from two counselors at Toano Middle, who credited the program in part for a drop in disciplinary problems.

But Community Services Director Tony Conyers said his department hadn't received adequate reporting from Bacon Street -- reporting that could enable an evaluation of its success, which was necessary to secure federal money.

Conyers and Social Services Director Diana Hutchinson said Bacon Street evidently wasn't following the contract for the program, which required a focus on helping troubled families avoid losing their children to foster care.

Project Legacy has focused mostly on the children themselves.

The discussion among board members Wednesday was lengthy and wide-ranging. Board Vice Chairman Jay Harrison suggested that the board create a youth task force to study available services in the community, identify those that overlap and develop a coordinating intake/referral mechanism.

Supervisor John McGlennon -- whose suggested compromise won consensus from fellow board members -- would provide enough money for Project Legacy and a county program that more closely follows the family- intervention model favored by Conyers and Hutchinson.

McGlennon added a condition: that the county receive appropriate reporting from Project Legacy over the next year.

"We're going to want to see some clear indications of what's going on," he said. Then he said, "But I don't expect miracles."

Chairman Jim Kennedy said he didn't expect miracles, either. Kennedy then said, "But in a way, I do.

"With kids appearing in court as often as we're hearing tonight, we need some miracles."

County Administrator Sanford Wanner said he was reversing his recommendation to finance air conditioning in an auxiliary gym at Lafayette only on the condition that community users be given priority after school hours.

Wanner said he hadn't realized that the gym was used as a weight-lifting and conditioning room by the school's athletes.

Mathew Paust can be reached at 229-2854 or by e-mail at mpaust@dailypress.com Kara Urbanski can be reached at 229-3784 or by e-mail at kurbanski@dailypress.com